Should the makers of Redemption be allowed to play in tournaments? If so, which ones? Do other games allow the creators and play testers to play in sanctioned tournaments? Today we’ll take some time to look at these questions and the pros and cons involved with the answers.
Status quo
Redemption Elder refers to the people who help design new cards, test the cards, and make the rules of Redemption. Presently all Elders are allowed to play in any Redemption tournament, up to and including the National Tournament (the highest level our game has to offer).
Many of us come with a background from other popular CCGs or similar type of games. Sometimes this type of question even comes from the difference we see between Redemption and what another game does. It’s good to take a look at how some of these other games answer the very same questions.
Exclusionists
MTG is the oldest and most popular CCG, one that many of our readers are familiar with. Their high-level tournaments offer large cash prizes. They have a team of full time paid developers that design and test each new set. Several of them were once top players in the game, hired because of their understanding and success. All of their employees and immediate family members are not allowed to play in sanctioned events.
Similarly, Pokemon also offers large prizes to the winners of high-level tournaments. Their employees and employee’s family members are not allowed to play in sanctioned events. Yu-Gi-Oh! also has a similar policy for their trading card game.
Inclusionists
Now that we’ve looked at how the main three CCGs handle employees and tournament play, I’d like to check out another perspective. One of my favorites new games over the past year is called Dice Masters. It’s produced by a small company, with few employees. Similar to Redemption, the player base is casual and very friendly.
I don’t believe their employees played in the first National or Worlds Dice Masters tournaments. I’ve heard of them playing in other large events at conventions and in smaller drafts. When their employees have played in constructed events, they’ve even taken the opportunity to “show off” unreleased cards that other players don’t have access to yet.
Common Ground
It seems most other games have a couple things in common.
- All of their designers and developers are employees
- They don’t allow employees or their families to play in sanctioned events
- They offer lucrative prizes at their high level tournaments
- These rules exist to keep people from having an unfair competitive edge
How Does This Compare to Redemption?
The Elder team is made up entirely of volunteers. They don’t receive any pay for what they do, but do it for the love of the game. Like other games, some of them were successful at high-level tournaments before being asked to join the team.
The list of Cactus Game Design’s employees is pretty small. Redemption does allow those employees and their family members to play in sanctioned tournaments. In fact, for most players it is a novelty. It adds to the “fun and fellowship” atmosphere of the game when you get to sit down at a table with Rob Anderson, or his wife Susan.
Redemption is not large enough to offer lucrative prizes the way other games do. There are no large cash prizes. There are no scholarships. At the highest level, a Redemption player can hope to win a trophy and a few packs of cards.
The final bullet point is what I believe causes some players to question whether or not Redemption should allow Elders (or even employees and family members) to play in sanctioned tournaments. These people have access to unreleased cards several months in advance. Does that give them an unfair advantage over the average player?
Advantage?
A new set was just released. As one of the Redemption Elders, if I were to play a game against you today with new cards it’s likely that I have an advantage. I’ve been building decks with the new cards (in all their various forms) for months so I already have a good idea what works well together. The average player has only just gotten these cards and hasn’t had time to play with them to see which combinations work and which ones don’t.
Where other games release new sets every few months, Redemption releases one set per year. Let’s fast-forward a year to Nationals 2016. The new cards are a year old. Players have had a year to discuss, build, play and enjoy the new cards. Do Elders still have an unfair advantage due to prior knowledge of the cards?
I cannot speak for other Elders, but being involved with the card development can cause me confusion when it comes to playing with the released version of a card. Some cards go through several changes during play testing and I don’t always remember the exact special ability that gets printed. That’s not to discount the potential advantage, just to point out that it’s not always an advantage.
One of the qualifications of being an Elder is that these people were already highly invested in the game. Redemption has a much smaller community than the previously mentioned CCGs. That leaves us with a smaller pool of highly invested people who can fill the role of Elder. If we limit who can play in sanctioned events, we further limit who will be involved at the Elder level, since some people would prefer to play competitively.
Prior to being asked to be part of the Elder team, many of our current Elders had won one or more events at the National level. At Nationals 2015, of the 8 category winners (there are 2 winners in Teams) 5 of them were Redemption Elders. Has inside information played a part in the continued success of some Elders? If we were to exclude Elders from sanctioned play, at which level(s) should we exclude them?
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